


Meeting

by L0NE



Category: Nier Gestalt | Nier Replicant | Nier (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, girls hangin out, i tricked you. there is no plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:47:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25986112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/L0NE/pseuds/L0NE
Summary: “You can call me Accord,” the woman continues with a smile, putting her hands under her chin. The name is odd. Yonah is sure it isn’t her actual name, because what kind of parent would name their kid something so weird sounding? “And what’s your name?”“I-I’m Yonah…” But now she was self conscious, and felt that her name sounded weird, too. She’d never met anyone else named Yonah before.Actually, she really hasn’t met too many people other than her own family before.
Kudos: 9





	Meeting

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to make a short little story about Accord being in the Nier timeline and it ended up being this. Woo. Hope you like

It takes Yonah two hours of being tucked away in a safe room for her to realize she doesn’t want to sit around anymore.

It isn’t due to any sort of anxiety or claustrophobia— the safe room, a locked supply closet in an abandoned daycare, is large enough to hold her whole family with some wiggle room included. But right now, Yonah is sitting alone in it. 

Alone. With her own thoughts.

Typically, her brother Nier would be with her while their parents were out scavenging for food, but this time around, he had insisted on going with them. _Yonah will be fine,_ he had said, pulling his hood up. _I need some experience outside actually fighting those monsters. Let me come with you._

Quite honestly, Yonah _would_ be fine if she stayed hidden under lock and key, which is why they eventually agreed, thinking it would be good for their eldest to get some experience out in the field, anyways. 

It was just that none of them had counted on Yonah acting out while they were gone. 

_If everyone’s out there doing stuff and I’m just lagging behind,_ Yonah thinks, pacing around the closet, _then I’m gonna feel bad._ She’s always like this, being too headstrong even with how weak she is, but her family always being nearby was what stopped her every time. Her brother would watch her like a hawk while her parents were away, keeping her too entertained to have her mind wander off to other things. 

But alone like this, she really gets to thinking about if there’s anything she can do, considering there’s so much she doesn’t do— if her brother can go out to be helpful, then she can, too, right?

The part of her mind that tells her the trip is a bad idea is temporarily drowned out by her rumbling stomach. 

_There might be food laying around somewhere upstairs…_

Yonah puts a hand to her stomach and sighs. 

_I should be fine as long as I stay quiet…_

That’s what she tells herself, and so she decides to proceed with her idea. 

Yonah, after bundling back up to face the outside, slowly steps out of the safe room, minding the creak of the door. Carefully, she locks it back up with the spare key her father left her, then slips the key into her coat pocket. The air inside the emptied closet is musty and still, like old paper, but the air outside of it is cold and wet, a sign the snow outside is still raging. When she exhales, her breath fogs up the air. She shouldn’t be out for too long, or her throat will start to act up.

To start, Yonah doesn’t check any of the rooms on the floor she’s on. They had been searched by her parents the previous night, so there wasn’t any point. Instead, she walks to the end of the hall and looks at a faded map of the building, posted outside of a stairway. Currently, Yonah is on the first floor, with two floors above her to go through.

It’ll just be a quick trip. A normal person could walk through the whole building in under 10 minutes if they wanted to. Yonah could probably manage that.

She walks up to the second floor and checks every door she passes. Most rooms are just messes— broken windows, debris, furniture upturned, that sort of thing— and the few that aren’t are locked with no key in sight. Yonah remains close to the walls and checks every inch that she thinks she can manage of the navigable rooms, worried the floor will give out from under her thanks to age, but eventually takes brave steps and begins searching every area thoroughly. Her gloved hands begin to ache as she pushes desks and couches aside to see if anything is hidden underneath them, and her chest follows suit. 

But she doesn’t want to give up too easily. No one else in her family does. If she can find something useful in this dump, she’ll consider this trip a success, so she wants to actually try.

Of course, just because she wants to find things doesn’t mean she actually will. It doesn’t take too long for Yonah to reach the last door on the second floor empty handed. 

Briefly, she stops to catch her breath, which is straining against the cold. Then, she pulls up her scarf as best as she can and continues on, knowing time is of the essence.

Slowly, she pushes the door open.

The room is small, and has no furniture. It looks like it was purposely cleared out, or furniture had never even entered it in the first place. 

What makes this room different from all the others, though, is that there’s a woman in it, sleeping (hopefully, since there don’t seem to be any visible injuries on her) against the back wall.

Yonah’s heart leaps out of her chest for a split second. It’s not the first time she’s seen a drifter laying about, but that doesn’t mean she can get used to the sight any time soon. 

The woman on the floor is beautiful, more beautiful than anything she’s ever seen in a while. Yonah barely gets to bathe, but this woman’s hair has volume and shines under the light coming from the nearby window, twintails splayed against the wall she leans against and on the floor she sits on. Yonah wears the same two outfits every day, but this girl’s clothes are stylish enough to make her look like a doll, with dark thigh high boots folded underneath her and a creamy white coat that has no stains, even though the entire world is disgusting and dirty.

Yonah stops admiring the mystery drifter to instead ask herself questions. When had this stranger arrived? While her parents were away, and she was still in the closet? But she looks to be fast asleep, so she had to have arrived earlier… Which made no sense, seeing how her mother was guarding the building’s entrance through dawn…

...There are so many things Yonah doesn’t understand at this moment, but she does realize she has to leave. Strangers are unpredictable and dangerous— everyone nowadays is desperate for whatever they can get their hands on. She had seen it plenty of times before, people turning on each other at the drop of a pin, which was why her family only traveled with themselves.

Yonah quickly turns on her heel, as silent as she can be without waking the woman she walked in on. 

But then, the floor she steps on makes a large, unbearably loud creak as Yonah begins to leave, and she involuntarily freezes.

For a moment, there’s still silence. 

And then, there’s shuffling behind her.

When there are more noises that follow— shuffling of fabric, creaking of the floorboards— the panic starts to set in. Yonah’s fear of the immediate unknown glues her to the floor, leaving her standing in the doorway, doorknob still in hand, back turned.

In her head, she runs the scenario she’s in over. She has no weapon with her, she’s small, and she can’t even walk for a long time without getting winded— if this stranger decides to pounce on her, to hurt her or steal from her or even kill her, she would stand no chance. 

And the thought of all of that happening because she thought she could do something helpful, but ended up being as useless as always, fills Yonah with a dread so heavy it makes her heart feel like it’s dropping into her stomach.

She stands in the doorway, trembling. She begs her legs to move, but they don’t listen to her, and she wants to cry, but she’s so scared she can’t even—

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


A warm hand is put to her shoulder. 

“Are you alright, miss?”

All of Yonah’s facilities return in that moment, because she jerks away from the touch and spins around, nearly tripping over her own feet so she can face the stranger and try to hold her own ground the best a child can. 

“P-Please don’t hurt me,” is all Yonah can say, her voice strained.

The woman, who is standing above her now, towers like a tree in comparison to Yonah’s short stature. Her eyes are wide open, and a beautiful light shade that Yonah finds herself being drawn into. “Hurt you? That didn’t even cross my mind,” she says, shaking her head. “You’re as white as a sheet. Do you want to sit down for a second?”

But Yonah can’t even get the words out. “I… I…”

The stranger nods, “I’ll take that as a yes, for now. Not like you can move like that.” Then, she gently guides Yonah inside of the room, hand on the younger girl’s shoulder, steering her toward a large white suitcase that Yonah swore wasn’t there a moment ago. Gently, the woman sits her down on it, and Yonah realizes she’s shaking horribly.

The woman seems to realize that at the same time, because she sits on the floor across from Yonah and raises her hands. “I’ve got no weapon on me. You don’t have to worry,” she insists. “And being mean to a kid would be pretty low.”

“You can call me Accord,” the woman continues with a smile, putting her hands under her chin. The name is odd. Yonah is sure it isn’t her actual name, because what kind of parent would name their kid something so weird sounding? “And what’s your name?”

“I-I’m Yonah…” But now she was self conscious, and felt that her name sounded weird, too. She’d never met anyone else named Yonah before.

Actually, she really hasn’t met too many people other than her own family before.

Accord’s widening grin brings Yonah out of her musings. “Yonah… Cute! I’ll have to remember that one.”

There’s a pause. Yonah can’t really ask what she’s doing here, given the situation. Afterall, so many people are wanderers, including her, that it feels like such a loaded question. Maybe she should ask how she got in in the first place? 

“So, tell me about yourself, Yonah,” Accord starts, cutting off Yonah’s thoughts, and she reaches into her jacket pocket. It takes a moment, but she soon pulls out a sleek, small rectangle, and Yonah recognizes it to be a voice recorder. It has only three buttons she can see from this angle— a record button, a play button, and a pause button— and it’s shoved too close to properly examine anymore once Accord hits the bright red record button with her thumb. “How old are you? Have you been wandering for your whole life? Do you have family?”

The way Accord pursues answers without abandon makes Yonah feel small. Not to mention uncomfortable. But Accord doesn’t seem to realize this, smiling ear to ear. It’s sort of like movies she’s seen or books she read, where a writer who’s desperate to get a story out of someone will stop at nothing for it. 

In this case, Yonah is the one with the tell-all scoop, but she can’t see how anything she would have to say would be remotely interesting...

Eventually, after a few beats of silence and no sign of letting up from Accord, Yonah cracks under the pressure. She puts her hands together and picks at the stray threads on her gloves. “I-I’m 9,” she starts, not making eye contact with Accord anymore. “We only had to start living like this when things got really bad a year ago, but before that, we all lived together not too far away from here, I think…” And she really has to pause to think, because those days feel so long ago now that she could have mistaken them for sweet dreams. “I still have my mom and my dad and my brother, but they’re away right now…”

“Away?”

“T-They went out to get supplies. About two hours ago maybe.”

“And they just left you here?”

“No...!” Yonah shakes her head, her voice coming out too loud and making her cheeks flush scarlet in embarrassment. The way Accord phrases it makes her parents seem like they don’t care, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. If they weren’t 100% sure she would be safe, then they wouldn’t have left her behind— it was _her_ decision to ignore them. “My parents left me in a safe place. I just decided to… leave it… Since there might be something here that can help us, that I can look for while they’re out.”

Accord raises her eyebrows at that. “You’re a little adventurer, aren’t you?” She says in awe. Before Yonah can protest that, however, Accord makes a show of clicking the record button again, then putting the voice recorder back into her jacket pocket. “And stubborn, too. I knew someone just like you— even had white hair like you, too! I wonder if that’s a common link, hair and personalities.”

That sounded ridiculous to Yonah, but then she thinks about how her mother and father are more stubborn than she is by a longshot and their hair is white like hers. Maybe Accord has a point.

“What did you record that for…?” Yonah asks, pointing to Accord’s pocket.

“Oh, it’s just a little job I have,” Accord says.

“A job?” In these times? The only job opportunities she had ever heard about were either joining the army that went against the white monsters or doing science-y things that Yonah couldn’t wrap her head around whenever they were explained to her. It makes sense that her parents are jobless, since her father had been stay-at-home as long as she could remember, and her mother had worked at an office— neither of them fit the requirements that either field required.

Glancing at Accord, she seems too stylish for an army woman or a scientist, and much too casual in her way of speaking. There’s no military-grade rifle by her side that Yonah has seen others carry, and her glasses are smart-looking, but not enough to trick Yonah into thinking she’s a super genius.

Accord brings her out of her thoughts by standing up, dusting her jacket off and then extending a warm hand to Yonah. “Yup, a job. I’ve had it my entire life, so I guess it’s something more than just that, but I’m not sure what other word to use. ‘Duty’, maybe?” She answers her own question. Yonah takes her hand and stands up, but doesn’t bother dusting any debris or dust off. Her clothes are already permanently dirty from how often she wears them, so trying to clean them off now would just be redundant.

“It’s your duty to ask people questions? That doesn’t sound like fun,” Yonah comments. “Especially right now. I bet all you hear is negative stuff.”

Accord picks up the suitcase with her free hand and walks out of the room, Yonah’s hand still in hers, and Yonah allows herself to be tugged along for the ride. She can’t really name _why,_ other than the fact that she thinks maybe Accord will lead her somewhere good. There was one more floor to check, afterall, and there was a possibility Accord knew of what was in them. “It’s not that. It’s to collect information. 99.9% of the time, I just speak into the recorder myself, sort of like an observer. But lately, I’ve found there’s much in particular to update about anymore,” she says. The hallway is short, and they reach its end not too long after she finishes her sentence. In front of them is a staircase leading upward, and when Accord begins to ascend it, Yonah follows. 

“That side of the job is supposed to be very hush hush, you know. But I thought it could be fun, getting a first hand account from someone, so that’s why I recorded you for a second there,” she continues. 

They reach the top of the staircase and then turn to ascend another next to it, which would lead them to the third and final floor. “I mean, if they don’t like it, I’ll erase it. It’s just that… I get bored, too, you know? I’m much more used to fun during work.”

There are at least 20 different questions swimming in Yonah’s head now, regarding whatever Accord’s job was supposed to be and how long she’s been doing it, but she doesn’t know where to start. And she feels like no matter how much time she has left with Accord, whether it’s another 15 minutes or an hour, she won’t get the answers she’s looking for, anyways. She can tell by how purposely vague the details are that she’d been given.

So she doesn’t push for any. Instead, Yonah quickens her pace so the two of them reach the third floor faster, “Do you think that this’ll end any time soon?” She asks. “Dad said people are looking for some kind of cure for WCS, and if that’s true, those white monsters’ll stop showing up, right?”

Accord looks at her. They pause in front of a closed door— the third floor is much smaller than the other two, with only one other door available that has a sign that says _ROOF_ over it, which means this current one is the last thing to explore. 

Yonah is about to reach for the doorknob when she sees that Accord’s expression is rather flat. No more grinning like moments before.

“Do you want me to be honest?” She asks. Her voice is firm.

That makes Yonah pause. 

It’s the first time anyone’s ever been so forward with her. She isn’t blind, so she knows things aren’t the best in the world right now, but her brother and father shield her from the harsh truth whenever they can. _That person over there isn’t dead, they’re sleeping and you shouldn’t get closer. The monsters can’t hurt you if you’re quiet, so you have to stay quiet. The government will start rationing out food any day now, but until then we’ll have to scavenge._

Yonah isn’t stupid. She’s hopeful things will get better one day, that life will return to normal somehow, but she isn’t stupid. Things are and will be tough. Nothing will be as easy as people tell her it will be.

So, if given an opportunity where someone will just be frank with her...

She nods, grabbing the doorknob and twisting it open. “...Yeah.”

Accord nods.

The two walk into the room, and it’s freezing. It makes sense, Yonah realizes, seeing its several windows either opened or shattered in, glass all over the floor. The snowfall howls outside, and Yonah briefly wonders about her family before breaking free of Accord’s hold to check every inch of the room. Every tipped over piece of furniture, every floorboard, every shelf. Meanwhile, Accord stands in the doorway, her arms crossed. One hand is holding her voice recorder, finger pressed down on the record button. 

“...I think…” she speaks into it, “that there is a good chance— no, a very, very likely chance, an almost certain chance... that this is the end for the human race.”

Accord says it, and Yonah processes it. And then Accord continues,

“Technology and medicine aren’t being produced at a fast enough rate to counteract Legion or the plummeting population. Humans are close, but always one step behind. They won’t be able to catch up before it becomes too late.”

A part of Yonah feels crushed. But a part of her also understands, somewhat. She’s heard her mother whisper things like what Accord’s said to her father when she thinks Yonah or Nier won’t overhear. Her mother is easy-going and humorous, and Yonah loves her with all of her heart, but she’s still much more realistic than her father is. She tells him things that he refuses to acknowledge, and all he does is say they’ll _talk about it later_. But Yonah never overhears them having that kind of talk.

“Though…” Accord’s voice cuts through Yonah’s thoughts, “I could be wrong. It’s rare when it does happen, but my calculations can deviate from the norm.” She clicks her voice recorder off.

Yonah reaches the corner of the room and moves a desk aside, hopeful that it will reveal something, but there’s nothing but dirtied floorboards. She gets down on her knees and knocks against the floor with her fist, listening for a hollow point (something she learned to do for everything now), and when she actually finds one, her eyebrows raise. There may be something hidden under the floorboards here. 

“Is a little deviation enough to save everyone?” She asks.

Accord shrugs. “Maybe not everybody. But somebody, sure. Humans are resilient things.” She talks like she isn’t human herself.

Yonah begins to pry the floorboard up using a spare pipe that’s laying nearby. She doesn’t look at Accord anymore, all of her focus on the task at hand. “Are you scared?” She asks. 

Accord throws it back at her. “Are you?”

For a second, Yonah thinks. Briefly, it crossed her mind that Accord was really conversing with her like an adult, and that makes Yonah feel a little bit more confident in her response. 

“...No, I don’t think so,” she shrugs, jerking her hands back to lift the board up more. The floorboard is close to snapping— the lack of functioning windows in the room has left the floor damp, giving her much more leeway with soaked wood. Just a little bit more and she can find out what’s underneath. “I’m not scared if my family is with me. We all take care of each other, and I love them. Being with them is all I need. I can still hope that things go back to normal when they’re around.” 

“It might seem dumb to be able to t-think…” she breathes, starting to realize this is a daunting physical task for someone of her condition, but she doesn’t think to stop. In fact, if Accord asked her if she needed help, she would no doubt turn her down, but Accord remains off to the side, watching. “...That things can be normal again, e-even after what you just said, but…” She pulls back with the pipe, jerking her hands one last time, and there’s a wooden, earthy _SNAP_ that ripples from the floor up through Yonah’s body. 

She looks down to see the floorboard bent in two, and she tosses the debris and pipe away, ready to see whatever treasure that was supposed to lay out of sight. “...I’ll still think that things can be like that again, as long as me and my family keep going,” she says. Then, she reaches down and pulls at the pieces, throwing them aside.

“...Mmn. That’s a good outlook to have, I think,” Accord nods. Though Yonah isn’t looking at her now to notice, Accord is staring at the girl, almost as if trying to study her.

“If your whole family’s like you, Yonah, I think you’ll be part of the little sliver that'll make it out of this mess.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Accord walks Yonah back to the closet she was supposed to stay in. In the younger girl’s arms is a bag, what she had recovered from underneath the floor on the third floor. Some of its contents are useless— money, which means nothing anymore, and keys to something that Yonah couldn’t determine, since trying them on other locked rooms didn’t work— but some of its contents are a godsend. A box of granola bars, a box of crackers, a pack of batteries, and some bandages. It was definitely put together in case of emergency, but Yonah doesn’t feel bad about taking it. If its owner needed it so badly, then they would have come back for it a while ago.

“So, how’re you gonna explain that to your family?” Accord asks, pointing to the bag. “I don’t think they’ll be too happy to see you’ve gone out.”

“I can lie and say I found it hidden in the closet. I’m good at lying now, you know.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But I only lie if I need to.”

“What’s a situation where you _need_ to lie?”

“...When my brother and I don’t listen to mom and dad, but we don’t wanna get in trouble for it.”

Accord laughs at that, and it makes Yonah’s face flush. 

The two sidestep the blockage in the first floor hallway and arrive at the safe room, no sign that her family had made it back before she did. _A successful trip,_ Yonah thinks to herself as she takes the key out from her pocket _._

She’s just about to unlock the door when she turns to look back at Accord, who’s still standing next to her. 

“What are you going to do from here?” She asks, genuinely curious. Accord is nice, in Yonah’s opinion, for however little she’s known her, so she doesn’t mind giving up some things if she needs them. After all, it would be a nice repayment for her being the first company she’s had in what was far too long that wasn’t someone directly related to her. “D-Did you want some of the stuff I found?” 

But Accord immediately shakes her head, humble. Her eyes crinkle and there’s a grin on her face that says _you’re being silly_ to Yonah, the kind Nier would give her when he would tease her. Is this how a big sister would act?

“No, no. I don’t need any of that,” she insists. She shifts the bag she’s been carrying in her hands. It seems heavy. “Trust me, I’d feel awful taking anything from a kid.” Again, emphasizing Yonah was a child.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Now, you should probably head in, okay? It’s about time I took off, too. Job and all that.”

Accord nudges Yonah toward the door, gently, and Yonah unlocks it. She peeks in to make sure the shadow monsters didn’t spawn somehow in the room, but the coast is clear, and she steps inside. Accord remains rooted to the ground, not following, but instead watching Yonah begin to shut the door behind her.

Obviously, this would be where they would part ways. And, without having to say it aloud, both of them know they’ll probably never see each other again. It’s such a bittersweet feeling, at least for Yonah, to finally meet someone new in all of this only to have to leave them behind. 

There’s a lot she still wants to talk about, just to soak in the presence of another person, but they don’t have that kind of luxury. Instead, Yonah peeks through the crack in the door and looks up at Accord. “I-It was nice meeting you, Accord,” she squeaks out. 

And then Accord nods, “It was nice meeting you, too, Yonah.”

Then, she turns on her heel. 

And after seeing Accord begin to walk down the hallway, Yonah locks the door.

She takes a seat on the floor of the safe room, in the corner, next to a group of boxes, and listens to Accord’s heels click until the sound is completely gone.

Yonah is back to being alone once again.

“I hope she stays safe,” she muses to no one, then hustles into the corner and squeezes the bag in her arms tight. 

Her eyes start to close, realizing how much the interaction has drained her once she’s seated. 

That was right, she didn’t sleep that much last night, and she had moved a lot this afternoon, climbing all those stairs...

Quietly, she mumbles. “I hope her calculations are wrong…”

Because if they are, then maybe things will get so back to normal, so normal that they could meet again under better circumstances. Where Yonah is in nice clothes and can make the two of them something to eat and she can introduce Nier and they can all be friends together, something like that.

If that could happen, it would be a miracle.

Yonah dozes off and dreams about it.


End file.
